The Wabash and Erie Canal was a shipping canal that linked the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River via a man-made waterway.

The canal known as the Wabash & Erie in the 1850s and thereafter, was actually a combination of four canals: the Miami and Erie Canal from the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio to Junction, Ohio, the original Wabash and Erie Canal from to Terre Haute, Indiana,; the Cross Cut Canal from Terre Haute, Indiana to Worthington, Indiana (Point Commerce), and the Central Canal from Worthington to Evansville, Indiana.

Junction was so named because in that community, the two canals joined. The Miami and Erie Canal continued south to locks at Loveland, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, where canalboats took the Miami River to the Ohio River.

Construction

Congress provided a land grant on March 2, 1827 for the canal's construction. On January 5, 1828, the Indiana General Assembly accepted the grant and appointed three commissioners.Charles R. Poinsatte, Fort Wayne During the Canal Era 1828-1855 (^* Indiana Historical Bureau, 1969), 33-34. These commissioners concluded that the canal would have to extend into Ohio and petitioned that state to appoint a commission of their own. The state legislature approved the plan and new commissioners appointed. After several legislative battles begun by proponents of the railroad, the Indiana General Assembly approved the borrowing of $200,000 to begin construction. February 22, 1832 ground was broken and construction began.Pointsatte, 35-36 Construction of the canal reached Logansport by 1837.Pointsatte, 80. The Panic of 1837 devastated Indiana's program of internal improvements, but did not stop construction entirely.Pointsatte, 81. The canal reached Lafayette by 1843, Terre Haute by 1848 and Evansville by 1853.Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 285.

Operation

It began operation in the summer of 1843. It only operated for about a decade before it became apparent that the canal was uneconomic. Even when canal boats were operated at extremely slow speeds, the banks rapidly eroded, and the canal had to be constantly dredged to be operable. Terre Haute, Indiana, housed the headquarters of the canal from 1847 through 1876, when the canal lands were sold at an auction conducted by resident trustee Thomas Dowling at the Vigo County Court House.

The last canalboat on the Wabash canal made its last docking in 1874 in Huntington, Indiana, but other sections shut down years earlier. In 1877, Paulding County, Ohio residents put the final nail in the canal system's coffin: unhappy with mosquitos breeding in the stagnant waters of Six Mile Reservoir, they cut the dike and drained it in the Reservoir war. There were several other "reservoir wars" during the canal's colorful history over the same issue, including the Clay County Canal War in Indiana.

Trivia

• The combined Miami and Erie/Wabash and Erie canal system, at 635 miles in length, was the longest in the world.

• The highest section of the canal in a geographic sense was where it crossed the moraine in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which gave birth to that city's nickname of the "Summit City."

• A modern semi is legally limited in most states to about 40 tons - the same displacement as a canal boat. It could be towed at its the speed limit of 4 MPH with one mule. A semi typically has about 400 HP to travel at its speed limit of 55 MPH.

Notes